The West Mata Volcano is producing boninite lavas, believed to be among the hottest on Earth in modern times, and a type seen before only on extinct volcanoes more than one million years old.

According to University of Hawaii geochemist Ken Rubin, the active boninite eruption provides a unique opportunity to study magma formation at volcanoes, and to learn more about how Earth recycles material where one tectonic plate is subducted under another.

This area hosts a band of low titanium tholeiite and boninite mafic volcanic rocks believed to have been emplaced in high heat flow rifting environments, important for the formation of massive sulphide deposits.

Because some Archean komatiites are associated with calc-alkaline volcanic rocks and boninites, Grove and Parman (2004) argued that like recent boninites, komatiites may result from wet melting above a subduction zone.

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